Monetize Your Blog through Text Messages – TextMarks

TextMarks has launched this new service which allows bloggers to either charge $4.99 or $9.99 per month to their readers to get these instantaneous alerts.

It’s currently only available to US cell phone users on Cingular, Verizon, Sprint or Alltel.

I’m not sure it’d work for the majority of blogs as an income stream – but for those who break news that people must know – then it could be a worthwhile monetization stream to look into.

How much do bloggers make from TextMarks subscriptions? From reading the Terms of Use it seems that publishers only make 30% of the subscription (while I know they’d have costs and the carriers take their cut it seems a little low for my liking – as a content provider I’d be hoping to make as much out of it as the carriers themselves (who can make as much as 50% by the looks of things).

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Like you said, I doubt that the readers of most blogs would have a need for such a service. Even if your blog is updated multiple types a day, people could just check them out online, or subscribe to blogs via e-mail alerts which could be forwarded to their cell phones.

Things like weather updates, local traffic reports, and important warning information could be a useful text message alert. Also, most phones, other than PDAs, are not useful for reading long articles.

For example, my blog at http://www.alexshalman.com/blog, would not draw many sales through text alerts. My readers can easily go online in the morning, lunch time or before bed. Many times I tend to post-date the publishing of my articles for early morning EST. I feel like reading my article first thing in the morning could put someone in a better mood and let them have a better, happier and more productive day (depending on what I happen to write about ofcourse).

1.I can pay for this if it comes in handy.Many people would like if they blog is browsable through their mobile.As far as I know there is one plugin available for making your mobile compatible for being accessed through.

2.I am not sure i got that question, if you can explain a little more.

3.As more number of people are tending to access net through mobiles, it can came in handy may be not now but thats the future.Blogs being accessed from mobiles is closer. 5 or 10$ is not much if they are really intended towards it.

However with the ease of internet it might not get a boom now.It has to wait till the industry shifts more on mobiles.Its predicted one day Mobiles will replace laptops.Thats the Future

I wouldn’t pay to offer that service to my readers unless my blog was already on a paid subscription based model. Then I’d include it in the price of initial subscription if I could.

Wouldn’t on the receiving end either unless that was the only way to get the news And it was news I had to have or else. RSS is fast enough for me, and I can get most feeds on my phone, or create rss to email that will talk to my phone.

I don’t think MY readers would pay for it, but it seems like it would work with a model that was already on a pay system. IE- If there was a special in-depth version of your blog that was $5 – $30 a month, the extra info is critical enough to my business that it woud be cost effective and I’d pay for both that and text email access.

Definitely think my readers won’t pay for it. I don’t think It’ll pay for this service also because my laptop and PDA is more than adequate to keep up with blog updates.

I’ll only pay for this service if I own a celebrity blog. Celebrity blogs are very competitive when it comes to breaking entertainment news or scandals and I won’t mind paying for TextMarks because you’ll earn it back anyway with ad revenues.

1. I will never pay for it not because it costs money but because it brings too much interruption and distraction to my life. Internet, emails, cell phones… are enough, I guess.
2. Well, if I’m a trader, I probably want up-to-date information related to my biz quick.

Text messages are huge in many parts of Asia and there are a lot of companies that offer similar services for free. I don’t think anyone would be willing to pay for it unless the information was really time sensitive.

The content has to be really good and valuable to get anyone to pay, besides there are other alternatives available which you can use for free so I guess this kind of monetization would have a very limited use unless you have a great idea to make it work.